#######################UPDATE OF: NODC Ocean Heat Content (0-700 Meters) Versus GISS ProjectionsThis is an update of an earlier post “NODC Ocean Heat Content (0-700 Meters) Versus GISS Projections” in light of the NODC correction of an erroneous data posting. I will leave that earlier post intact for now; I have provided a link there to the corrected version here. The following gif animation illustrates the NODC correction:http://i36.tinypic.com/2coomlw.gif
Correction GIF Animation

Did the correction eliminate the downward trend in the NODC short-term data used later in this post?

Yes, but the slight upward trend in the corrected OHC data still reflects a flattening of Global OHC in recent years.

Did the correction eliminate the divergence between the GISS projection and the short-term data used later in this post?

NO!
In this post, I’ll clarify the source of the NODC data that I’ve used in this series of posts to counter the misdirection that is being presented in blogs, one in particular. And using an early 2009 post by Roger Pielke Sr. as reference, I’ll illustrate the difference between Global OHC and the projections of OHC made by GISS.

Through that same webpage, the NODC also made their OHC data available prior to the publication of Levitus et al (2009). I presented my first post on the new NODC OHC data on March 22, 2009 (The Latest Revisions to Ocean Heat Content Data), and, less than one month later, Geophysical Research Letters published Levitus et al (2009) on April 11, 2009. Since the publication of Levitus et al (2009), the NODC has updated its OHC data in the same way NCDC, Hadley Centre, and GISS update their global temperature anomaly data. The September 14, 2009 NODC’s OHC update included erroneous data for January through June 2009. That update was only made available in global analyzed field format.

Apparently, my posts of the NODC OHC data drew attention to it, and, with some investigation, the NODC discovered that they had posted an incompletely revised dataset at their website, which was in turn made available through KNMI. The NODC corrected the mistake and KNMI updated their dataset on October 15, 2009.

The updated NODC OHC data is also available on a much more user-friendly basis through the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) Climate Explorer website:http://climexp.knmi.nl/selectfield_obs.cgi?someone@somewhere
As you’ll note, the NODC OHC data is one of many datasets that KNMI maintains and makes available to the public.

Open the Climate Explorer webpage. Scroll down and click on the “Heat content” “1955-now: NODC 0-700m” field for the NODC OHC data. Scroll back up, click on “Select Field”, enter the coordinates of the ocean area desired on the next webpage (-90, 90, -180, 180 for global data), hit “Enter”, and Climate Explorer provides graphs and links to raw data. Figure 2 is the NODC Global OHC anomaly graph created by Climate Explorer. Refer back in this thread to Figure 1. I created it with the raw NODC Global OHC data produced by Climate Explorer. My Figure 1 is a larger, easier-on-the-eyes version of the KNMI graph, Figure 2. Other than the presentation, there is no difference.http://i33.tinypic.com/n96ib.png
Figure 2

COMPARISON OF OHC DATA FROM THE NODC AND KNMI WEBPAGES
KNMI uses the 3-month-average OHC data available from the NODC website and lists those monthly averages for each month during the 3-month period. This “squares off” the monthly data. The anomaly data I’ve used in my earlier posts is calculated against the KNMI default base years of 1971-2000. KNMI presents the data in Gigajoules/sq meter (GJ/m^2). This allows users to define ocean coordinates for study and to compare multiple datasets without having to account for surface area. If the user then wants the data in another format such as 10^22 Joules used in climate studies, it would be up to the user to determine the correct surface area.

To simplify the comparison of the raw OHC data from the NODC website…ftp://ftp.nodc.noaa.gov/pub/data.nodc/woa/DATA_ANALYSIS/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/DATA/basin/yearly/h22-w0-700m.dat
…and the same data through the KNMI Climate Explorer, I’ll use the annual average of the raw Global OHC data from KNMI (not anomalies). As noted above, the NODC presents its data in terms of 10^22 Joules, while KNMI provides the OHC data in GJ/m^2. The global ocean surface area listed in Wikipedia is 361 million sq km. If that surface area is used as a multiplier for the KNMI data, it proves to be too high, but as illustrated in Figure 3, 350 million sq km for the global ocean surface area provides a reasonable match.http://i35.tinypic.com/24dms89.png
Figure 3

You’ll also note that I’ve included the average of the January through June 2009 OHC data in the comparison. It shows a continued flattening of the NODC OHC data since 2003.

Global OHC could rebound over the second half of 2009, or it could drop more, or could remain near the value for the first half of the year. Let’s assume for the sake of example that the average of the first half of the year serves as an initial projection of the annual 2009 OHC value. Figure 4 compares the global OHC observations and GISS projections from 2003 to 2009. The divergence between the two is substantial.http://i37.tinypic.com/i6xtnl.png
Figure 4

Comment Policy, SST Posts, and Notes

Comments that are political in nature or that have nothing to do with the post will be deleted.####The Smith and Reynolds SST Posts DOES NOT LIST ALL SST POSTS. I stopped using ERSST.v2 data for SST when NOAA deleted it from NOMADS early in 2009.

Please use the search feature in the upper left-hand corner of the page for posts on specific subjects.####NOTE: I’ve discovered that some of the links to older posts provide blank pages. While it’s possible to access that post by scrolling through the history, that’s time consuming. There’s a quick fix for the problem, so if you run into an absent post, please advise me. Thanks.####If you use the graphs, please cite or link to the address of the blog post or this website.